Saturday 3 July 2010

Ostend Women, Final

Well we got very close but in the end we came up painfully short - we managed to not lose in all of our last 11 matches, we could just not get enough VP's to carry us over the line to a medal.
We finished a very gallant 5th behind some of Europe's other well known teams but at least we did qualify for the Venice Cup in Eindhoven next year.

Winners were France who pipped the Netherlands by 1VP.
Third were the Swedish another 4VPs behind.
Germany were the other team in the top 5.

Watch out for the European teams in the Venice Cup - they all gave very good accounts of themselves here.

Friday 2 July 2010

Ostend Women, Eight

An honourable draw with the Netherlands and some results elsewhere going in our favour mean that with two matches to go we are second behind the Netherlands, but any one of SIX teams can win medals and no one team is standout for any one in particular.
We have, on paper, the toughest of the matches left - we are playing Denmark at the moment and finish with Israel, but if we play well - who knows?

Ostend Seniors, Four

The Seniors continued their campaign on Wednesday with losses against Scotland, Bulgaria and Poland whose narrow win avenged their defeat in Brazil.

Thursday was a different story with wins against Norway, Switzerland and the hosts Belgium.

They now lie 15th, 44pts adrift of a qualifying place for the Bermuda Bowl and with only 6 matches left it is unlikely that they will qualify.

Peter Baxter

Thursday 1 July 2010

Ostend Open, Eight

Today we needed 3 wins to stand a chance. We started with a good win against Latvia (20-10) and then beat Switzerland 17-13. We were behind in this match but gained 20 imps on the last board when Sandqvist-McIntosh bid a grand slam and Nick played it correctly to make it. The last match against France was the most important as they were also potential qualifiers and we won this 22-8 in a well played match by our side. 4 matches to go and we can afford no slip ups if we want our ticket to the Bermuda Bowl and today the team were playing like they wanted to get there.

Ostend Women, Seven

The last match on Tuesday turned out to be a fine one for us as we gained 25VPs v Czech Republic.
We followed that with another good day yesterday scoring 19, 21 & 22 v Sweden, Spain and Turkey.
This morning's match was against a very experienced Austrian side who held their own, we managed to win narrowly 17-13.

In the meantime the German Ladies squeaked a win against France by 16-14 - tightening the top of the table a little.

1 FRANCE 419
2 NETHERLANDS 414
3 ENGLAND 407
4 SWEDEN 402
5 GERMANY 398
6 POLAND 395

Poland - courtesy of a 25-4 win over Wales are making a late rush for a medal place.

Still all to play for but it looks like we are going to need some help to catch the French.
We play the Netherlands in the first match of the last day (Friday) - to use yet another sporting phrase - "a real 6 pointer"